https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9951-2633
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Abstract
The twenty-first century has been shaped by the emergence of powers from the developing world, with the growing weight of the Global South within the international system. The alliances achieved by these countries gave a new impetus to multilateralism, placing development at the centre of the global agenda. As a result, since the early 2000s, South–South cooperation (SSC) has been gaining increasing prominence, constituting an essential part of the cooperation strategy of many Global South countries. Focusing on its economic, political and technical dimensions, and considering their similar development challenges, this article tries to map Latin America–Africa bilateral SSC initiatives and subsequently reflect on these data. Furthermore, a closer look into those SSC initiatives is provided by considering Africa’s two main partners in Latin America: Argentina and Brazil during the period 2003–2015. The study concludes by providing an analysis of their productive bilateral SSC initiatives in order to derive conclusions on the (medium- or long-run) economic potential of such experiences. This would indicate that such SSC potential can help alleviate Global South countries’ so-called external constraint through the improvement of their productive structure and trade diversification.
Acknowledgements
The authors are especially grateful to three colleagues interviewed for the purpose of this paper: Lucila Rosso and Valeria Giacchino (former General Director of International Cooperation – DGCIN – and Specialist in International Cooperation at DGCIN, respectively), with whom Andrea Molinari also co-authored previous versions of this paper, are thanked for the provision of valuable information about Argentina’s SSC (especially concerning the period 2013–2015). And Martín Rivero Illa (SEGIB’s Coordinator of the Social Cohesion and South–South Cooperation Area) contributed to a better understanding of the process behind the elaboration of SEGIB’s role in the First African South–South Cooperation Report. We also appreciate the comments pertaining to a previous version of this article presented at the recent Simposio ‘Regionalismo e Integración Regional: Las regiones en incertidumbre’ at the 14th Congreso de Ciencia Política (SAAP, 17–20 July 2019) and the ISA Accra Conference (1–4 August 2019).
Disclosure statement
The authors declare no conflicts of interests in this study. This research was conducted with approval from the relevant institutions. All (anonymised and non-anonymised) interviewees gave consent to be interviewed for the purposes of the research.
Notes
1 Performed in June 2021.
2 Performed in July 2021.
3 In the first conference – in 1955, Bandung, Indonesia – 29 recently independent Asian and African States took part (SEGIB Citation2018b).
4 Authors’ own English translation.
5 Although Brazil and Argentina – albeit with less resources – approached the OECD more formally in 2017, during the period under study their ‘progressive’ governments implemented a different development path.
6 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
7 An example of this is the order by President Jair Bolsonaro (2019–present) in 2020 to close Brazilian embassies in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
8 Authors’ own English translation.
9 Authors’ own English translation.
10 Exporting sectors’ global insertion and domestic markets expansion suggest a potential improvement in consumers’ purchasing power (Ghiglione Citation2020).
11 NEPAD – the African Union’s technical arm – was transformed into the – autonomous – African Union Development Agency in July 2018.
12 Following the UNDP initiative, there were two ‘kick-off’ work instances in Addis Ababa – first with representatives of seven or eight and the second with representatives of 11 African countries – in which SEGIB transferred its political articulation and countries’ alignment experience, together with the methodology to structure basic SSC information needed for each country (source: interview with Martín Rivero, SEGIB’s Coordinator of Social Cohesion and South–South Cooperation; the interviewee agreed to be named).
13 For example, Chinese technical cooperation with Africa comes together with infrastructure investment and the subsequent interregional trade development, with the technical component being only a complementary element.
14 Given Argentina’s horizontal conception of cooperation – where every country has some capacities to share and some others to strengthen – many of its projects are ‘bi-directional’ – that is, Argentina and its partner country are both cooperation providers and recipients. Hence, when accounting for SSC initiatives, Argentina appears as provider and recipient in a similar proportion (source: interviews with Argentine officials).
15 These are the instruments for carrying on the initiatives. Each project is a set of actions – with goals, schedules, etc. – and each programme involves a set of projects.
16 Due to space constraints, this paper excludes the analysis of triangular and regional cooperation initiatives; see Molinari, Giacchino and Rosso (2019) for more details.
17 For example, Brazilian technical cooperation in 2010 involved funding from 91 public agencies together with 44 federal public institutions (IPEA 2011).
18 For example, a Brazilian agricultural knowledge cooperation project, although executed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), if implemented with the Agência Brasileira de Cooperação (ABC), could be categorised as technical cooperation, scientific and technological cooperation – when it develops new products and patents – or educational cooperation–agricultural research training (IPEA 2017).
19 This may exclude some initiatives performed by governmental agencies in a decentralised way (eg in 2014 only seven – of 22 – Latin American countries registered their exchanges (SEGIB 2016), while in 2015 (SEGIB 2017) 10 countries reported at least some SSC exchange experience with Africa).
20 See Molinari, Giacchino, and Rosso (2019) for a more detailed description of these reports.
21 Uganda is the second most actively SSC-engaging African country.
22 For example, during 2005–2009, over 100 federal government agencies were involved in international cooperation projects (IPEA 2011).
23 Authors’ own English translation.
24 Authors’ own English translation.
25 After the 1990s closure of five of its embassies on the continent (in Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Senegal and Zaire) due to ‘budgetary problems’, during 2000–2015 the country opened – or reopened – three of them (in Angola, Ethiopia and Mozambique).
26 The 70 agreements signed between 2003 and 2011 contrast with the 88 signed during the previous 44 years (1960–2003; Lechini 2016).
27 Between 2007 and 2015, there were two Argentine presidential missions to five African countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in 2008, and Angola in 2012), compared to three trips to two African countries during 1989–2001.
28 Provided by Argentine officials.
29 Initiatives can be filtered by type of cooperation, geographic or political area, country and/or sector (http://www.abc.gov.br/projetos/pesquisa). When some of the key fields for the database were missing, and where and when such information was available, Brazilian data was completed with specific information about each initiative.
30 With 76.5% of total SSC expenditure for Africa destined to the five CPLP African Portuguese speaking countries: Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and Angola (IPEA Citation2014). In Equatorial Guinea – also a CPLP member – the three official languages are Spanish, French and Portuguese. The peak coincides with total governmental cooperation investment.
31 However, during 2010, CPLP countries’ participation fell to 7% due to the increase in resources destined for Haiti (IPEA 2014).
32 In 2014, Ibero-American countries as a whole carried out about 40% of ‘productive’ initiatives with Africa (SEGIB 2016), falling to 18% in 2016 (SEGIB 2018a). This contrasts with the region’s SSC initiatives with Asian countries: 49% in 2014 and 44% in 2016.
33 This category was excluded from the definition of ‘productive initiatives’ because it shows a lower scale without the capacity to trigger relations between partner SSC countries.
34 In contrast to SEGIB’s, our classification does not include the forestry, extractive industries, and construction sectors because there were no recorded initiatives of these types for Argentina or Brazil with African countries.
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Notes on contributors
Andrea Molinari
Andrea Molinari is a researcher at CONICET/UNSAM and teaches international economics at Buenos Aires University (UBA). She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex; her thesis explores implicit obstacles to EU sectoral trade integration. International economics has always been her main field of study, focusing upon international political economy issues, such as the links among regional economic integration, trade, production, South–South cooperation and multilateral finance for development. She has also worked in both governmental and international organisations, such as the Ministry of Industry and Central Bank of Argentina, Interamerican Development Bank, African Development Bank, the World Bank and the European Commission. She has also taught, in both Argentina and the United Kingdom, international economics, macroeconomics and microeconomics.
Federico Mena
Federico Mena holds a law degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires’ School of Law. He has finished his master’s degree in International Studies at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (pending thesis evaluation). His master’s thesis (under the supervision of Andrea Molinari), entitled ‘National Development Banks as a Foreign Policy Tool: The Role of the National Bank for Economic and Social Development in Africa during the Workers Party’s Presidencies’, discusses the role of South–South cooperation in the Latin American countries’ foreign policy. His research interests are international cooperation, South–South cooperation and Latin American international relations.
Javier Ghiglione
Javier Natalio Ghiglione has a Degree in Economics from the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. He works as a research assistant for Andrea Molinari at AESIR/CEHEAL/FCE-UBA and has been an active collaborator in the research project that funded this article. He was awarded a research grant from the National Interuniversity Council (CIN) and wrote his graduate thesis, entitled ‘South–South Cooperation: Latin America and Africa, Development Challenges in a New Era’, under the supervision of Andrea Molinari. His research interests are economic development and international and South–South cooperation. At present, he works as an advisor in foreign trade issues at the Argentine Ministry of Productive Development.